Video Interview

by Jonathan Arogeti

The Asian American Justice Center’s Terry M. Ao recently spoke with ACSblog about how the Voting Rights Act, which protects American voters generally from disenfranchisement, specifically bolsters the franchise for Asian Americans.

Ao, the director of Census and Voting Programs at AAJC, said that for Asian Americans, “one of the largest hurdles that voters face is the language barrier.” Section 203 of the VRA extends protections to members of language minority communities in jurisdictions with significant language minority populations. “Where it has been properly implemented,” she said, “we’ve seen increased voter participations and it’s really done a lot to help break down these language barriers for the Asian Americans.”

The Voting Rights Act requires the Census Bureau to determine political jurisdictions that are subject to minority language assistance provisions. Following the 2010 Census, the Census Bureau determined that Section 203 covers 43 Asian American populations in 22 jurisdictions (counties, boroughs, census areas or cities) in 11 states. Furthermore, the provisions cover eight language groups, an increase from five from the last determination in 2002.

“Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires language assistance for voters, for the covered languages in covered jurisdictions,” said Ao, “but that really means that the assistance has to occur throughout the voting process; so that’s both pre-Election Day as well as on Election Day.”

Increasing voting participation in Asian American communities requires a coordinated public education effort aimed at voters, poll workers and public officials. Ao said, “It includes things like written materials--translated written materials as well as oral assistance at the polls -- and publicity of the availability of language assistance to the covered language groups.”

Watch the full interview with Ao below.

This video interview is part of an ACSblog Constitution Week Symposium. By Nicole Flatow

The role of U.S. courts as a “corrective for the dangers of majoritarian abuse” has been stymied by conservatives and originalists, University of Chicago Board Chair Geoffrey R. Stone explains in a video interview with ACSblog.

“I think one of the real problems that we have had in the last 40 years in the United States is that conservatives have effectively taken control of the public discourse and the academic discourse about the proper role of courts and of constitutional interpretation,” says Stone, chair of the American Constitution Society Board of Directors.

This is dangerous not just because originalism and judicial restraint are “wrongheaded” on their own terms, but also because conservatives are misleading people about what the courts are actually doing, he explains.

“The public actually tends to believe that conservative judges and justices behave in a way that can be explained and justified in terms of judicial restraint and originalism when in fact, the actual jurisprudence of the existing majority on the Supreme Court and many Republican-appointed judges on the lower courts does in fact not fit,” he continues.

This problem is the subject of a new ACS Issue Brief by Stone and University of North Carolina law professor Bill Marshall, The Framers' Constitution: Toward a Theory of Principled Constitutionalism, which discusses how progressives can reframe the discussion about the Constitution and the courts.

“The Framers’ Constitution … is designed to illustrate why [originalism and judicial restraint] are deeply flawed, and why they don’t in fact put forth a coherent or persuasive theory of constitutional interpretation,” Stone explains.

Watch the interview below.